Great blog post!
I enjoyed reading this!
I saw this topic in my new LP e-newsletter right after calling in a take-out sushi order, and I knew I should leave right away to pick it up and give the post my undivided attention while I ate, so I had some quality time on 3rd Ave in NYC to reflect on my own "dumb" travel choices.
But I could not produce a single regret until I was home, chopsticks in hand, reading the list. And suddenly, there they were.
My Red Wings experience was the AFC Championship game between the Colts and Patriots--I flew in to Indianapolis on the frigid January night of the game and watched it on TV from, coincidentally, a sushi restaurant. I don't even care for pro football, but I should've gone.
This would count for my James Brown tribute story, too, except that I also watched Obama's inauguration from Fredericksburg, Virginia, an hour south of DC. --Though it was strangely poignant to have voted in my "real Virginia" elementary school as I was between jobs and back under my parents' somewhat conservative roof for a few months, and to then watch the Inauguration at a local wineshop with complete strangers.
Asian street food didn't do my GI system in--remarkable, given how much of it I ate in Beijing--but the water did. I involuntarily rinsed my toothbrush with cruise boat sink water on the YangTse River, China. I had not completely recovered from the bug in time to join an excursion to see the Three Gorges... but I don't regret going anyway. Sickness held off for those three hours, and I returned to the ship's medic afterwards for yet another IV to my HAND. The ship medic did not particularly care for hand-washing, for either of us. This was also my Vietnam, the trip I didn't document.
My tornado drive was in west Tennessee last year--I really thought I could beat the storm system driving from St. Louis to Memphis that was, oh, the width of Texas and length of the continental US. It is the second most scared I've ever been in my life.
GREAT post. It made me feel better about missing stuff, but more than that, it made me realize... maybe I haven't missed out that much.
